We want you to know that Consumers Energy remains strongly committed to Genesee County.

Dennis DobbsCourtesy photo

By Dennis Dobbs

More than a year ago, Consumers Energy announced our interest in exploring the possibility of building a natural gas plant in Thetford Township to help provide homes and businesses we serve across Michigan with electricity. This week, we put the Thetford project on hold.

We want you to know that Consumers Energy remains strongly committed to Genesee County. We are Genesee County’s largest taxpayer. Our Flint service center, gas training center and power station employ about 450 people. Our employees live in and are part of this community, contributing more than $50,000 to last year’s United Way campaign and volunteering thousands of hours of their time to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, The Salvation Army and more.

Deferring construction of the Thetford plant does not diminish Consumers Energy’s efforts to work with others to grow the Genesee County economy. We are committed to increasing spending by $1 billion with Michigan-based suppliers through 2016 as part of the Pure Michigan Business Connect initiative, in addition to the $2 billion we now spend each year as one of the state’s largest purchasers of goods and services.

In Genesee County alone over the last two years, we’ve increased by $9.7 million the local contracts we’ve awarded as part of our support for Pure Michigan Business Connect.

Consumers Energy is holding off on the Thetford project not because there’s any question we need new, more environmentally sustainable energy. Seven of our aging coal-fired plants will close in a couple of years, and we need new sources of power to serve a growing state.

Instead, we are pursuing another, more affordable way to serve the public’s needs. We intend to buy a natural gas-burning plant in Jackson in early 2016.

There are compelling reasons for this approach. We expect the Jackson natural gas plant should be a substantial source of power, but at a far lower cost – about $545 million less – than the Thetford project.

Those savings should benefit all of the homes and businesses in Michigan that we serve, allowing us to deliver natural gas and electricity more affordably and reliably. We expect to use the money we save to replace poles and equipment, to trim trees around power lines, and to expand and upgrade our natural gas system.

We are a Michigan company, and our promise is to care for all of the communities we serve. That will continue to include Genesee County.

Dennis Dobbs is vice president of generation engineering and services for Consumers Energy.